Process

This is one of the most interesting aspects of comics for me, how do x number of creators get to the same point – finished comic – from so many different approaches. From a writer’s viewpoint I’ve been refining my process almost constantly as I learn new things and try to feel out what works for me.

At present my process currently looks like this:

1. Idea – could be anything from a character name to an almost complete story.
2. Explore idea – keep writing down anything that comes from the initial idea.
3. Write the story in full – once critical mass is reached on the idea, write down the story in shortened prose, hitting all the major beats where possible.
4. Break down the story into the major beats, giving you a rough idea of what form the comic will take – one-shot, mini/maxi-series, OGN etc
5. Issue paragraphs, one paragraph explaining what happens for each issue.
6. Single issue beats – can be as many as six or seven or as few as two or three. This also gives me a rough page guide.
7. Pages 1-22 (or whatever you decided after the above) – what information you want to get on each page.
8. Write it!

The first two parts are self-explanatory. For part three – what is critical mass? For me the simple answer is whatever you decide it to be, if you can see a story or a brief part of one at any given point, write it down. As this develops you will see how the story shapes up in general and that’s when I would commit to writing as much of it down as possible. What this does is give you a framework from which to delve into what exactly it is you have and whether it is enough to warrant going further. However this will depend on your intent, comics doesn’t put a roof over my head or food on the table, so writing comics to make money is different to writing comics for experience and to build a CV.

Shortened prose isn’t the best of descriptions but it is how I think of essentially getting the skeleton or synopsis of the story down in words. Basically, a few paragraphs that explains the whole story. For instance, here’s a great example from Justin Jordan who gave me a lot of good advice and from whom I’ve adapted several parts of this way of working.

Citizen
After a reporter’s wife kills herself and their young son in a bizarre act of social defiance, he is driven to explain what happened to her. He finds strange things on her hard drive that he can’t explain, and his investigation leads him to a series of similar acts all over the country, all connected by one word: Citizen.

Citizen is a living ideology, a group reaction to the corruption inherent in modern American society. It takes over the minds of people who read it, turning them into citizen and using them to strike against the government. In the end, the reporter is unable to convince anyone of the existence of Citizen, and frustrated by society, he kills himself in a public act of defiance. He has become a Citizen.
© Justin Jordan 2008

From this you should be able to define the initial important events (any story will be subject to change, sometimes on a large scale) and, depending on what events you wish to highlight, give you a basic walkthrough from beginning to end. These events or beats should also give you some thoughts as to what format best fits the story – is it an open-ended story that warrants an on-going series? If it has a clearly defined ending is it a mini or maxi series? How many issues will that take? Should it be served up all at once as an Original Graphic Novel? What about small instalments as a web comic? There’s a lot to consider about what form allows you to best tell your story.

Once you’ve decided on a format and are happy with the general story beats, you can break it down into successively smaller parts that should make the story a more manageable, enjoyable process whilst giving you plenty of freedom to explore. Deciding on a starting point will be a major component of this section. I read this incredibly informative article by Steven Grant recently, which may help you understand the benefits of really thinking about where you want the story to begin.

Dependent on what format I’ve opted for then, I can break the story down into whatever size pieces I feel comfortable with. You can do it by issue, giving you what part of the story each issue is going to deal with. Breaking it down further to see how each issue is tailored to serve that part of the story, right down to the 1-22 on a piece of paper to decide what each page, or even panel, should look like and how it builds the story.

I know this can be seen as a very drawn out and mechanical process, plus it hasn’t lead to me writing anything of note yet, but I find it gives me a lot of smaller goals to achieve and a very clear idea of every part of the story. This helps me to keep chipping away at a story each time I sit down to write. Ultimately though, there is no substitute for writing and gaining practical experience of what works for you. Hopefully this will have helped some but I’d love to hear from anyone with a different method